Paul Burstow: In my public statements and in my statement today, I have made it clear that the spotlight needs to be shone just as clearly on the provider organisation in this case, and not just on the CQC.. That will be my continued intention as we pursue this matter to its conclusion.

Robert Halfon: Further to what the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) said, given that the CQC clearly ignored the advice it was given, there should be resignations at the highest level—the buck has to stop somewhere.

Heidi Alexander: What conditions, if any, have been placed on the Arab partnership fund to ensure women’s equal political participation—and dare I say it?—representation in north Africa’s emerging democracies?

Yvette Cooper: We should take this opportunity to pay tribute to those who work so hard to protect our national security. Today we expected the Home Secretary to update the Prevent strategy, but she has done nothing of the sort. We support updating the Prevent strategy, but there is a massive gap between her rhetoric today and the reality of her policies. Where she should be building consensus around counter-terrorism, instead she has been political point-scoring. She has set out no actual proposals on how she would deliver in such an important area.
	Most of the work on the development of Prevent was done after the 7/7 bombings and it was treading completely new ground. Urgent work was needed to disrupt the process of radicalisation, but there was no experience to draw on, and a range of different approaches was rightly tried. Much of that work was supported by the Opposition at the time. Some like “Channel” were very successful; some were not as effective. We were clear from the very beginning that it would need to be reviewed and evolve in the light of the evidence. The same is true now.
	The Home Secretary, however, has claimed with great certainty that she will not make mistakes. If she believes that she now knows all the answers on how to tackle extremism and radicalisation, she is heading for a fall. In her desire to blame the previous Government for everything she is blinding herself and her Government to the fact that this is difficult work. Some of what she would like to do will work, but some will not, and it will need to be reviewed again, but that should be on the basis of evidence, not political positioning.
	The Home Secretary has not even told us what her new mistake-free strategy involves. We agree that some groups should not be funded because of their extremist views, but the review says that it found no evidence to indicate widespread, systematic or deliberate funding of extremist groups, either by the Home Office or by local
	authorities or police forces. She has told us nothing about the new framework that will somehow prevent it happening inadvertently with local decisions in place. She has said that there will be a new focus on integration from the Department for Communities and Local Government, but what is it, what will it do and how will it be funded? She has already cut 40% from the Prevent funding for local councils this year alone and they have major cuts still to come.
	The Home Secretary has claimed that there will be stronger work by universities and the NHS, but the Universities UK and the British Medical Association have already rejected her views. How workable are these plans if such critical stakeholders are hostile from the start? She has not set out different approaches for dealing with violent extremism, non-violent extremist and integration and seems to be confusing all three. Is it not the truth that there is a massive gap between her rhetoric and reality?
	The Prime Minister has claimed that there will now be no more of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism, but what will the Government actually do and how will they deliver? Police counter-terrorism budgets are being cut in real terms, as are the Foreign Office’s counter-terrorism programmes, and later today the Home Secretary will introduce a Bill that will make it harder, not easier, to prevent terrorism attacks by watering down elements of control orders. Despite all the Prime Minister’s strong claims about getting tough on extremists, there is still no sign that he will meet his pre-election promise to ban the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
	I know from previous experience of the Home Secretary’s statements that if I give her a long list of questions, she will not answer them, so let me leave her with just one: will she confirm that the Government will not meet their promise to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir and admit that sometimes is not as easy in practice to deliver counter-terrorism and work to prevent extremism as it is to make grand political promises as she has done today?

David Blunkett: Who could possibly disagree with the three objectives that the Home Secretary has set out? But she has not done herself or her Government justice by seeking to make party political points about those who had to deal—I did not have to—with the reality of post-7 July 2005. I just have one very simple question. How can she this afternoon talk about building on our institutions and on an understanding of our
	values and history while the Education Secretary is proposing to withdraw citizenship from the school curriculum?

Theresa May: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for again raising the internet, which was mentioned in an earlier question. It is important that we look at the use of the internet, and we can do so in a number of ways. The police could take action in relation to some of things
	that are put on the internet here, but one of the key things is to work internationally, particularly with the US. Many internet providers are based there rather than here, and are therefore outside UK jurisdiction. We are doing more to talk to the US, and indeed to those companies directly about their responsibilities.

Kris Hopkins: I want to concentrate on the impact of terrorism and anti-terrorism law on the relationship between the Muslim community and the non-Muslim community and between the Muslim community and the state. The Bill needs to be understood in the context of the Prevent agenda that was mentioned earlier, the relationship between the Muslim community and the police, the work of the security forces and international events, interventions and identity. There must be a question about what incited young British Muslim men to blow themselves up in British streets.
	Perhaps it is right that we should look right at the root of some of those issues and ask whether people feel that they are British, whether we make them feel British and what it is to be British. In July 2001, I watched out of the windows of Bradford city hall as hundreds of mainly young British Muslim men ran through the streets of Bradford while mounted police and young, brave police officers fought to try to protect the city. More than 300 police officers were injured, £20 million-worth of damage was done to the city and its reputation was severely damaged. That action was undertaken by mindless idiots. It was not about race—it was not a race riot—but about thuggery.
	It was interesting—these events were appreciated and understood by the community—that a few days later the local newspaper published the mugshots of some of the participants and the parents and family members brought those young men down to the police station and started the process of convicting them. That was a harmonious event among all the destruction and upheaval that was running through the community.
	Later that year, in September, a meeting of the council’s executive, of which I was a part at the time, was stopped and adjourned while we watched the second plane go into the twin towers. Those shocking events made the city reel. Our city was already uneasy with itself and braced itself for further fallout. The tension and suspicion were evident in the pub and the street and when one talked to friends; racists had a field day. What the terrorists wanted had happened and people were frightened. After the Iraq invasion, seen by many in the district as illegal, the dividing line with the Muslim community appeared even greater, so the community, led by the council and other agencies, set about mending bridges. Indeed, bridges were often created for the first time. For five years, there were school exchanges, people were brought together and cross-community sports were promoted. Areas were created where people could talk openly, speak honestly and speak their mind about issues, challenging each other. We were not naive about where we got to in that process, but it was important in building relationships.
	The day after it was announced that London had won the Olympic games, four men, one originally from Bradford, blew themselves up and murdered many innocent people. That evening, all the main agencies met at the university, which then and since has played a huge role in promoting cohesion in the district. They were brought together to talk, to try and reassure each other and to ensure that we resolved that individual psychopaths would not damage our city further. Our resolve to work together was stronger than that.
	In the days that followed, time and time again Muslim people came up to me and told me of their disgust at what had happened. Let me exemplify the feeling of fear. A couple of days after 7/7, an elderly friend of my mother’s was crying as she got off the bus. A young Muslim man—completely innocent—was carrying a rucksack on the bus and she feared that she would die as a consequence. A whole set of tensions, fears, contradictions and events ran through the community as a consequence of those terrorist activities.
	We need strong anti-terror laws, but they need to be owned by all the community. Many innocent citizens feel that the existing laws are somebody else’s and we need to ensure that we do not make the same mistakes. As I outlined in my introduction, communities respond, adapt, learn and survive in the face of terrible events and today the Muslim community in my town is not listening to this debate—those people are getting on with their lives, like the rest of the community.
	When I talk to people from the Muslim community, I hear that they feel battered. It is always the wider Muslim community—I know that is a generic term to use—that feels pursued. Good people who have no hatred in their hearts are looked on with suspicion by others and have been subjected to some of the knee-jerk reactions. I agree that it was difficult to start the Prevent agenda with a blank piece of paper and although I was
	extremely critical of it, I take it in good faith that it had to be started somewhere. The idea behind national indicator 35, which planned to map a specific community, had a huge impact and was seen as a hugely derogatory gesture.
	I have seen reports in the paper that doctors will be asked to report if they spot somebody who is acting suspiciously. My chief executive was brought to London and was told that the binmen had to look out for bombs and devices. Good-minded, good individuals, if they spot a bomb, a device or something suspicious, do not need the Government to ask them to pick the phone up and tell somebody. They do it because they are good citizens of this country.
	In conclusion, any anti-terror law must protect its citizens from ideological psychopaths who threaten to destroy society and the values that define it. One fundamental problem, as the Prime Minister has pointed out, is that there are differences in certain values to do with such issues as equality, human rights and corruption. The Government have the difficulty achieving a balance between ensuring safety and not alienating communities from one another. The aim of a coherent society cannot be achieved to the detriment of one part of that society.
	People can seek to integrate, respect each other and even to develop shared ownership of important laws such as the one we are talking about today without compromising their principles. I want the Muslim community to feel safe, to be successful and to play a full part in British society and this Bill must be made law to help and to enable and not to hamper that aim.

Naomi Long: The right hon. Gentleman’s experience in Northern Ireland will also colour his view on these issues. One of the experience that we had is that the use of unusual measures can often act as a rallying point for radicalising other young people, rallying them behind the cause, because people are seen as being persecuted rather than being tried under the law. Does he agree that such experiences show that these measures should be seen as unusual and that, for this reason, their ratification each year in Parliament is an important part of reinforcing that?

Tom Brake: It is pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), who drew on his experience and made some sensible contributions to the debate. I diverge from his view, however, on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) made about communications. The point about allowing people to have access to mobile phones, the internet or fixed lines is that there are indeed some intelligent potential or actual terrorists, but equally there are some rather stupid terrorists who may use those facilities and make the sort of connections that would facilitate a prosecution. That might be one of the purposes of making communications available to them.
	The Bill is welcome. It starts to tackle some of the grossest abuses of human rights that existed under the control order system, but I would like it to go further. For instance, on prosecutions, the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East referred to the fact that there would be additional resources for covert surveillance and intelligence. My understanding is that that will be used to secure prosecutions, which is welcome. More could be done to secure prosecutions, and we may want to return to that at a later date. I am pleased that the Government are not afraid of improving Bills where and when that is necessary.
	I do not agree with Liberty’s contention that the Bill is worse than the control order system that is currently in place. It is not; it is more targeted. Liberty’s argument seems to be centred on the fact that although control orders are continually on the political table because of the sunset clause that calls for an annual review and the
	associated parliamentary oversight, the effect of the Bill would be permanent. That is true. However, control orders have been debated annually and renewed year after year, whereas TPIMs are limited to a maximum of two years, following an initial period of one year.
	The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East argued that the Government should allow TPIMs to go beyond a two-year period. My understanding of one of the arguments deployed in favour of control orders is their ability to disrupt. One would expect that after a two-year period of a lack of communication or of controlled communication, the disruptive nature of control orders would have had an impact and broken down those networks. The right hon. Gentleman may have been arguing for TPIMs to be applied indefinitely to ensure that that disruption was permanent and took place over a longer time scale. My view is that disruption would have taken place within the first two years and the links would have been broken. To suggest that TPIMs should be extended beyond two years presents a threat from the civil liberties perspective.

Hazel Blears: I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate this evening and I think that all the contributions made so far indicate how serious the issues we are dealing with are and how difficult for everyone, whichever side of the House they are on, because it is a case of trying to weigh the balance and make some very difficult judgments. When dealing with matters of national security, it is important that we try as far as possible to reach a consensus, because these matters are incredibly important for the country, and that we try to start from the evidence base, which in my experience leads to better decisions on where the balance of judgment should rightly lie.
	I want to think about the evidence we face at the moment. First, that concerns the nature of the threat. Sometimes these issues are discussed in the abstract and are not necessarily rooted in the reality of the threat that the country faces. For some years the threat level has been “severe”, which is only one step down from “imminent”. That means that this country faces a very significant threat from al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism, often originating abroad but also involving people who were born and brought up in this country and are enmeshed in a series of worrying plots. It is important to put on the record the nature of the threat that the country faces.
	Secondly, we should consider the extent of the problem. People sometimes feel that, because we have been dealing with this threat for 10 years and have had the control order regime in place for the past six, the extent of that threat has somehow reduced. At any one time, the security services are dealing with tens of plots, which are often very complex and interrelated, with a web of international and domestic actors and many technologies, and involving incredibly complex organisations. Between
	1,600 and 2,000 known terrorist suspects are involved in these plots, and those are the ones we know about. There may well be other organisations, other plots and other individuals who, as we speak, are intent on organising the kind of terror that can wreak mayhem and destruction on our communities. The sustained nature of the threat and its extent ought to be a backdrop to some of the difficult decisions that we have to make with regard to this legislation.
	There is therefore a clear need for surveillance and the gathering of intelligence and evidence on the intentions and actions of those involved in planning and conducting terrorist operations. It is of course right, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and others point out in an eloquent and genuine way, that in a free democracy such as ours we should always seek to bring those involved in terrorism before the criminal courts. That should be our starting point. We should bring prosecutions where the evidence can be adduced and tested, where witnesses can be cross-examined and where a jury can reach a verdict on whether the accused is guilty or innocent. That must be the starting point in any democracy—that we have a criminal system that allows all that to be done as openly and transparently as possible.
	One of the reasons we brought in some of the new offences now on the statute book, such as committing acts preparatory to terrorism, was to enable us to interrupt plots at the earliest possible stage and still be able to bring a criminal prosecution and go through the conventional criminal system and bring those people to justice. Those offences have been very useful in giving the police powers to interrupt early and ensure that they disrupt the plot and prevent any damage while still using the conventional criminal justice system, which is obviously what we want to encourage.
	However, we must recognise that there are—and, unfortunately, likely to be for the foreseeable future—a small number of people involved in terrorism who pose a serious threat to the safety of our citizens and country and who cannot be brought within the ambit of the conventional criminal justice system. Much as we may dislike it, that is the situation we face. For several years there have been discussions, or attempts at discussions, between various Home Secretaries and Ministers and the judicial system, and in many cases the judiciary have been reluctant to engage in any discussions on whether the way the criminal justice system operate can be amended. I understand their reluctance because of the separation of the Executive and the judiciary, and they want to avoid confusion, but I feel that the criminal justice system is not necessarily able to cope with the nature of the threat and the offences we face in the world we now live in.
	Many of the suspects cannot be subjected to the traditional judicial system because to do so would mean bringing forward intelligence and evidence that could put at risk the lives of those who seek to protect us. We cannot allow that intelligence to be revealed as doing so would reveal those agents and their personal security would be jeopardised. Those people put their lives on the line for the people of this country and we have a duty to protect them. Bringing forward that intelligence would also reveal the surveillance methods and techniques that the security services often use to gain it, which would also undermine their ability to keep us all safe.
	Control orders have been used in a small number of cases and I think that we should get that number to its irreducible minimum. We imposed only 48 control orders in the six years that they have existed and there are only eight or 10 now in place. It is a very tightly managed and controlled regime, so those powers are not sprayed around and used loosely as a way of rounding up the usual suspects. That is absolutely not the intention. I am afraid that the reality, which we should all be grown up enough to acknowledge, is that the threat we face is such that we have to have a system that, however distasteful we as democrats find it, can protect the people for whom we are responsible.
	It was for that reason that in 2005 the then Home Secretary and I, as the Minister responsible for policing and counter-terrorism, brought forward the original control order legislation, which the Bill seeks to alter in some significant respects. I will never forget bringing forward that legislation. I remember being in this House at 4 o’clock in the morning debating that hugely contested legislation. In some ways that was very difficult, but in others it was very encouraging as it indicated the depth of commitment on both sides of the House to a free democracy in which people felt strongly about those issues. I was very glad when we finished at 10 o’clock that morning; nevertheless, it was an inspiring occasion and a good one for the House.
	I want make it crystal clear to the House that, whatever some Members might say, that original legislation was not introduced in some kind of knee-jerk overreaction to the events of 9/11 or 7/7. It was a genuine recognition of the inability of the criminal justice system to accommodate the situation we faced. I am a lawyer and I have huge respect for the rule of law—

Hazel Blears: I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has asked me that question, because this is where we end up in a sort of tortuous circle. That individual has not been charged because the intelligence against him does not comprise evidence, has been gained by covert surveillance and cannot be revealed in court, as it will put at risk either the lives of the agents or their techniques. We know that this person, as Mr Justice Wilkie said, remains a trained and committed martyr to the cause and is prepared to carry out further attacks, but, because the individual cannot be prosecuted through the conventional criminal justice system, the hon. Gentleman’s decision would be to let him walk free.
	That is the judgment that has to be made, and that is why these issues weigh so heavily on the people who have to make the decisions, people such as the Home Secretary, who has to make those decisions in individual cases. They weigh incredibly heavily on all of us and are not lightly taken, and that is why we need a system of checks and balances. An arbitrary limit of a two-year TPIM in every single case would cause me concern if the original threat still existed.
	My final concern, on which I have not received reassurance, is the extra costs of surveillance, because there will need to be greater surveillance if TPIMs conditions are substantially lighter and less invasive than those of control orders. Next year we have the Olympics, which will be a massive drain on the resources of the security services. That is acknowledged throughout the system, so I want significant reassurance from the Minister about the ability of the security services to maintain the same assurance to the citizens of our country through TPIMs as they have through the control orders system. I am not satisfied that that is the case.
	The control order system had more measures to disrupt people’s ability to organise their networks. Surveillance does not take the place of disruption, because it is a different technique of a different order, and, as Lord Carlile says, unless there is a system of disruption as well as surveillance, he has concerns about the effectiveness of the regime, as do I. The security
	services say that the extra resources would mitigate the risk, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), and it is incumbent on the Government to give us such reassurance.
	We must remind ourselves that the people who have been the subject of control orders are not law-abiding, innocent citizens going freely about their business. By their very nature, they are dangerous people who pose a real threat to our safety, and the measures must be sufficient to reassure people properly that the system is sufficient to control the movements of such individuals. Surveillance is not as effective as disruption, so we need to do more to ensure that disruption takes place.
	In all my years as a Home Office Minister, and through my work in the Communities and Local Government Department, control orders have represented some of the most difficult decisions I have had to make, because they go to the heart of our democracy. Our freedoms are incredibly hard won, and none of us wants to give them up lightly at all. I talked to a senior member of the judiciary a few weeks ago, who said passionately and in a very committed way, “Hazel, whenever there’s a decision to be made between liberty and security, I will always, always err on the side of liberty,” but it is more complicated than that.
	We cannot simply say that we would always make the decisions in that way. We might do in theory, in academic practice and, certainly, in terms of our values, but we are faced with making a decision that must balance security and liberty, the security of ordinary people seeking to go about their daily lives, as against the liberty of people for whom there is a great deal of intelligence to say that they are dangerous and dedicated, because of their political ideology, to causing mass harm and death among the community at large. That is an incredibly difficult decision, but sometimes it is portrayed as an easy one.
	Of course, we do not want to restrict people’s civil liberties or to introduce a punitive, repressive or oppressive regime, but the alternative is to allow people who pose a severe and dangerous threat to our country to walk our streets. Those decisions are hard to make, and I just ask the Home Secretary and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who is on the Treasury Bench tonight, to think really hard, as I know they will, about whether their proposed regime is sufficient to give the people of this country the reassurance that they deserve, and to ensure that that tiny minority of people who are subject to a regime are not able to continue to pose the threat of damage, death and destruction to the people of this country. I look forward in Committee to the Minister giving us a great deal more reassurance than I have had this evening.

Dominic Raab: Like others, I would like to commend some previous speakers, particularly the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) and the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert).
	Confronted by the terrorist challenge, the previous Government resorted to presenting a rather crude and blunt trade-off between freedom and security. Too often, it undermined Britain’s tradition of liberty without eliminating or even substantially reducing the threat to this country. In that context, I welcome the huge strides the Home Secretary and fellow Home Office Ministers have taken to defend and restore our freedoms by abolishing ID cards, halving pre-charge detention, tightening stop-and-search powers and the other measures they have taken in protection of freedoms legislation. I believe that Ministers have decisively reassessed how state power is used to protect us.
	In many ways, if truth be told, the whole debate on control orders has been allowed to obscure the substantial progress made by this coalition and this Home Office. Nevertheless, the truth is that the control order regime presents a pernicious affront to our tradition of liberty. It undermines the most basic principle of British justice—of being innocent until proven guilty. Orders can be imposed on people who have not been found guilty of any criminal offence. That is wrong in principle, and control orders have proved to be an ineffective tool in practice. I shall come on to explain why I believe that to be the case.
	In fairness, TPIMs are not as draconian as the old regime and again I want to recognise Ministers’ efforts to improve the conditions imposed by the Bill. In truth, however, TPIMs are only marginally less draconian and are certainly no more effective than their predecessor—and that is not much of a trade-off either. Liberty notes in its briefing that TPIMs
	“mirror the most offensive elements”
	of control orders. Under clause 3, the Home Secretary must demonstrate “reasonable belief” of involvement in terrorism as opposed to the old standard of “reasonable suspicion'”, but a criminal sanction of this severity should require proof of criminal conduct—not hunches, not opinions, but proof.
	The potential restrictions on individuals set out in schedule 1 remain onerous—residency requirements, curfews, restrictions on communication and association, travel bans, electronic tagging and all the rest. Clause 5 appears to suggest a two-year limit for TPIMs, but they can be renewed if new terrorist activity is alleged. That is itself a worrying comment on the credibility of the new order as a counter-terrorism measure. Clause 21 retains the penalty of five years’ imprisonment for breach of an order.
	In one important respect, which has already been mentioned today, the proposed regime is worse than that its predecessor. Control orders had to be approved annually by Parliament in recognition of their exceptional nature and the urgency of the circumstances in which they were introduced, which ensured regular parliamentary oversight, but TPIMs will not be subject to such parliamentary reviews. A temporary emergency measure will thus become permanent and entrenched, and we will have crossed a line. It is worth our asking, with that in mind, what we will gain from such an affront to our tradition of liberty and justice. What will be the security dividend from this trade-off of our freedoms?
	Of the 40 individuals formerly subject to control orders, seven absconded and five had their orders quashed by the courts. In 2009, each order cost the Home Office £135,000 to implement—quite apart from the costs of defending the orders from legal challenge and of policing. The number of control orders has halved in the last two years, from 20 to 10. Some will say that that shows that they are used only as a last resort, but in fact it demonstrates their irrelevance to the massive scale of the terrorist threat that we face. MI5 estimates that there are still about 4,000 terrorist suspects in the United Kingdom—10 controlees, 4,000 suspects. Let us not pretend that control orders have ever been anything more than the most flimsy and feeble of security safety nets.
	Control orders are not just of dwindling relevance; they constitute a distraction from robust law enforcement and are actually a negative. That is why I welcome the Home Secretary's renewed focus on the Prevent strategy. I would welcome further still measures to strengthen our deportation capacity, which has been undermined by judicial legislation resulting from article 8 of the European convention on human rights, via the Human Rights Act 1998. The massively inflated rights to family life now allow the majority of deportation orders to be frustrated. That has nothing to do with article 3 torture grounds, which I would stand up for. More specifically, as Lord Macdonald stated in his report on the counter-terrorism review, control orders are an “impediment” to prosecution and conviction because
	“controls may be imposed that precisely prevent those very activities that are apt to result in the discovery of evidence fit for prosecution, conviction and imprisonment”.
	The wider evidence is stark and clear. This country now has a gaping prosecutorial deficit. The number of convictions for terrorist offences has fallen by 90% in
	the last four years, despite all the legislative hyperactivity of the previous Government, despite all the hubris, and despite the exponential rise in the terrorist threat, whose existence I think we all accept. Yet conviction in court and locking up terrorists constitute the only guaranteed way of protecting the public.
	I find it worrying that we have heard so little about strengthening prosecution in real, core, concrete, tangible terms. We need a far more robust and proactive prosecution policy. We need to learn directly from experience abroad, particularly in Commonwealth countries such as the United States, Australia and Canada. We need much greater use of plea bargaining, although incidentally I do not see why the discount should be increased. I believe that if plea-bargaining were deployed effectively, it would almost certainly increase, not reduce, the number of dangerous people put behind bars. Indeed, that is the whole point of it.
	As others have said, we must also overcome entrenched bureaucratic inertia and lift the ban on the use of intercept evidence in court, thus ending Britain’s virtual global isolation and giving prosecutors an invaluable tool with which to secure convictions. I know from my experience of working at the Foreign Office on information co-operation with international war crimes tribunals, along with all the Departments and agencies in the United Kingdom, what the limits are and how intercept evidence can be used discreetly, carefully and competently, and I am convinced that we can overcome the objections that have been presented.
	The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) said that if we were to ask anyone in the United States, such as the FBI or the Deputy Attorney-General—I myself have talked to the counter-terrorism adviser in the George Bush White House—they would be aghast at the idea that intercept evidence could not be used as a powerful weapon to put more terrorists behind bars. It is absolutely critical. It is a mystery to me that we in this country have allowed so much surveillance of the ordinary law-abiding citizen, yet we adamantly and trenchantly oppose using intercept evidence to target prosecution against those engaged in terror.
	Lord Macdonald offered a very credible alternative to the control order regime, with restrictions linked to bail in the active pursuit of prosecution. I regret that his proposal was not taken up in place of the old regime, or, indeed, of the new one presented to us today.

Stephen Phillips: I can see that there is a powerful case for amending the Bill in Committee to introduce some annual review by Parliament, but there are countervailing arguments, some of which have been alluded to during the debate. The first of those arguments, which was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker), is that with the whipping system being what it is, such an annual review may prove pointless. The second is that if the House forms a view in relation to TPIMs, which are not control orders, it will have reached a settled view, and that will not fade from parliamentary memory. I think that everyone on both sides of the House accepts that once the reasons why TPIMs or control orders need to exist have disappeared, this legislation should also disappear. In those circumstances, while I can see the case for an annual review, it is not something on which I have a conclusive view, and I look forward to debating it again in due course.
	Returning to whether it is right in principle for the Bill to strike the balance that it seeks to strike, what finally has driven me to the view that the Bill must continue its passage through the House is the fact that the arguments against the balance being struck at all either misinterpret or only interpret semantically and without regard to its content what the rule of law actually means. We have created for ourselves, as have most other nations, a system of justice that involves the open trial of individuals for those things that we characterise as wrongs that deserve punishment. That system, however, is a fabrication of the society in which we live—no more, no less. It is not the only system that man could devise, but it has been found over the years to be the best system, even though we must occasionally alter or change it so that it meets the needs of the times in which we live. This is such a time, so the Bill seeks to fashion a different system from the ordinary criminal justice system, and it does so because, in my judgment, it must, for reasons that I have given.
	Is the system contrary to the rule of law because it is different? No. It is contrary to the rule of law, if in any sense, because we say it is, yet the rule of law as created
	must be protected, as it answers so well to the circumstances of existence that we must not seek to undermine it any more than is necessary. Again, there is a balance to be struck—what is necessary is what is proportionate to the circumstances, and in my view that is the regime that the Bill seeks to create. The same cannot be said universally of the regime that will be repealed if and when clause 1 comes into force. While the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 sought to strike a necessary balance, in my judgment it struck it in the wrong balance, which is tacitly accepted by the Opposition Front-Bench team, given their acceptance that the control order regime was not necessarily the best way of dealing with the threat that the legislation that they introduced sought to deal.
	I know, as I have said before in the House, new as I am, that it is the Opposition’s duty to oppose, but for those of us who have sat through this debate in its entirety it has been odd to note the opposition from their Front-Bench team, but the consensus among Back Benchers on both sides of the House that the Bill should at least complete its Second Reading.
	The previous regime of control orders permitted the Government to derogate from the Human Rights Act 1998. The Bill does not do so, which is progress. While I am no fan of the Human Rights Act, I accept that it includes welcome protections that have existed in our law for generations, even if consistently misinterpreted or over-interpreted by the Court in Strasbourg. The previous regime of control orders likewise provided a non-exhaustive list of the way in which the rights of the subject could be hindered. The Bill, by contrast, tells the Home Secretary precisely what she may do, circumscribed by Parliament. I know which I prefer and which meets the need to tackle the mischief at which the Bill is directed.
	The previous regime of control orders likewise allowed the Home Secretary powers overly and unnecessarily in effect to extinguish individual rights, the best example being the 16-hour curfew. The Bill, by contrast, limits the Home Secretary’s powers—again, always subject to review—to something which, to my mind, is more capable of justification, even though overnight detention orders require more definition. Most importantly, unlike the present regime, mere suspicion on the part of the state will no longer be enough to trigger the powers in the Bill—and rightly so. The Bill makes it clear that there must be reasonable belief that individuals can no longer be deprived of their rights merely on the basis of suspicion. Lawyers other than I have suggested this afternoon that there is little difference, but I disagree. Even if I am wrong, I am more content with a regime that requires some form of objective proof and justification than one that can be triggered merely on the basis of vague, subjective assertion on the part of the state.
	For these reasons, and many others which there is now insufficient time to develop further but which will undoubtedly be explored in Committee if the Bill goes forward tonight, it is my belief that this is the right Bill to address the dilemma that I posed at the outset and which the Government face in striking a balance between the rights of the individual and the obligation to protect all the citizens of this country. If the House divides tonight, the Government will therefore receive my support to give the Bill a Second Reading, as I believe they should receive the support of the remainder of the House.

Gerry Sutcliffe: This has been an important debate and I thank hon. Members on both sides of the House for the sincerity with which
	they have delivered their speeches on this important issue. We have had contributions from the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), the hon. Members for Newark (Patrick Mercer), for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), the hon. Members for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips), and the hon. Members for Wycombe (Steve Baker), for Bedford (Richard Fuller) and for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). We heard a range of viewpoints, from those who think that control orders have no place in our society to those who feel that we must have something in place to deal with the small number of people who cause the immense problems that we have. As has been said, there have been 46 control orders over the six years in which they have been in place.
	I think all hon. Members agreed that the safety and security of our nation should be the priority for any Government, and that that should rise above party political objectives, ambitions and gains. Perhaps, therefore, I should get the nasty business of politics out of the way at this point. We know why this Bill is here: it is a compromise between the two viewpoints that exist in the coalition. That is not just my point of view, because the hon. Member for Cambridge said that unless the Bill changed substantially, he may not be able to vote for it on Third Reading. Clearly it is a compromise, but putting the politics to one side, we have to consider the details. Our view is that the new TPIMs regime is very similar to the control order regime that has been in place. I know that in his response tonight, and in his busy time in Committee, the Minister will take on board a lot of the viewpoints of hon. Members of all parties, and their concerns about the Bill’s various clauses.
	The core reason why we are discussing this matter is that terrorism affects our country not only here at home but abroad, because unfortunately many of our citizens have been killed right across the world by terrorists who do not respect or believe in the sanctity of life. We all agree that we must applaud and acknowledge the work of our security services in protecting us. They have prevented atrocities from taking place at a more alarming rate.
	I do not wish to attack any hon. Member’s integrity or the views that they have expressed. Having served as a Home Office Minister, I know the pressure that the Home Secretary and her ministerial team are under because of the information that they have and we do not. I know that in taking their decisions, they have to weigh up all the issues of which we cannot be aware .
	Vigilance is always required in our position on terrorism. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles reminded us of the context of the current situation. We still have a “severe” threat alert, which is one level down from an imminent attack, so the country has to be vigilant. That is why the debate about the rights of the individual compared with the security of the many is important. She set out the background of why the control order regime was introduced. The debate about restoring the rights of the individual as against those of
	the majority is difficult, but it is the duty of the Government to err on the side of caution. That was why we introduced the control order regime.
	We know that the Bill retains many items from the old regime. It retains closed hearings, and sanctions will still be imposed on terrorist suspects outside the criminal justice system. Groups such as Liberty are unhappy and have called the new TPIMs regime control orders-lite.
	We need to consider in great detail the issues that hon. Members have raised. I was impressed by what the hon. Member for Keighley, who comes from the same area as me, said about the impact of 2001—not only the atrocities that took place but their effect in our communities in Bradford and Keighley. He was right that most right-minded people want the same things in life, but people felt threatened and frightened by different viewpoints and different ways of doing things. The Home Secretary talked about the Prevent strategy, and I am concerned about the different ideas about what Britishness is and how people from different backgrounds in our communities understand it.
	The hon. Gentleman was right that in Bradford, particular attention was given to integration between the many communities, but there is anger among the Muslim community about some of the things that we in the west do. On a recent visit to Azerbaijan I heard about the problem with the Nagorno-Karabakh territory, on which there are outstanding UN resolutions that need to be enforced. There are also outstanding resolutions on Kashmir. Some of the Muslim community feel that our way of dealing with things does not recognise their interests elsewhere in the world. Rightly, people have different viewpoints and disagreements. That does not make them terrorists, and it is important to understand that people in our communities have different viewpoints.
	The hon. Members for Keighley and for Beckenham said that the whole community needs to own this legislation. We must take party politics out of this. The whole of our community needs to understand why we need such regimes. Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer, said that control orders were a necessary evil.
	The hon. Member for Bedford said that the original intention of control orders was to deal with foreign nationals who, for a variety of reasons, could not be deported, but that more UK citizens are now under control orders. However, the House should recognise what my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East said because of his experience as an ex-Home Office Minister and an ex-Northern Ireland Minister—he has great experience of listening to the security services. He said that there was no book on the shelf to tell people what to do, and that the policy evolved and developed. He also rightly acknowledged that the debate creates great tension between the rights of the individual and the rights of the majority.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North has been consistent in his view that the rule of law should apply all the way through, and nobody has scrutinised counter-terrorism Acts more than he has.
	It is perhaps right to review the situation after six years, but my right hon. Friend raised concerns about the overnight residency measures. In Committee, the Minister will have to come up with a definition of “specified residence”. What do we mean by electronic communications? What about the rules on disclosure of evidence?
	The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington said that the Bill did not go far enough. His view is that there needs to be greater freedom. He made the civil liberties argument, and spoke of exclusions, disclosure and the time frame of prosecutions. We all believe that we need prosecutions; the question is how to get them. How do we use information that is otherwise unaccessible? My right hon. Friend asked whether information from other countries would dry up if those countries thought that it would come out in open court. That is a realistic possibility, and we must consider it.
	We must ensure that the control order review group is in place. We also need to consider mental health, torture and so on. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles tried to put us on the right course when she spoke of the need for consensus based on evidence, and put that in the context of the threats that we face.
	None of us wants to be involved in such difficult decisions or in considering the threats that individuals pose, but the reality is that we must do so for the security and safety of our nation. The hon. Member for Newark, who is a long-standing supporter of civil liberties, set out what happens when the state gets involved in too much detail and used the example of internment in Northern Ireland. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire was very clear that he thinks that control orders have no place here and that the Bill is a rotten compromise.
	The Opposition will ensure that we hold the Government to account in Committee. We will raise the issues of funding and resources. Will the Minister tonight tell us whether the resources will be spent on surveillance or on prosecutions, which hon. Members raised earlier? We will look at a great number of the measures in the Bill in Committee, but we want to support the Government. The hon. Member for Beckenham was right about the need to ensure consensus, but it is the job of the Opposition to hold the Government to account. We will do so in Committee, and we look forward to that process.

Stephen Lloyd: Thank you, Mr Speaker.
	As an officer in the all-party parliamentary group for ageing and older people and an active member of the all-party parliamentary group on dementia, and as the Member of Parliament representing Eastbourne and Willingdon, an area that contains nearly 25,000 people over the age of 65, I called for this debate because the current system of care for older people is in crisis. The recent awful and shocking exposé by the “Panorama” programme is a desperate indictment of the worst in care provision, but it would be a naïve mistake to believe that there are no other examples of bad practice out there. The growing age profile means that any Government will face difficult challenges for many years to come, and despite the growing demand, care provision has faced years of austerity with almost no net spending increase.
	There are currently 291,000 people in residential and nursing homes in the United Kingdom, along with 6 million carers who allow people to live in their own homes. That means that an extremely large proportion of the United Kingdom’s population is directly affected by care service provision. Those who work in social care, or who care for someone on a voluntary basis, are the backbone of our society. They are the unsung heroes whose voices often go unheard, not least because they are simply too preoccupied with the enormousness of the task in hand.
	A number of my colleagues who are present this evening will probably focus on several areas of care that affect older people, but I will focus mainly on dementia and on care service provision for dementia sufferers. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

Stephen Lloyd: That is an important point. My partner is a community matron, and a wee while ago I made a rather foolish comment by asking why, with all the skills she and her colleagues have, they do not cover dementia as well. She gave me very short shrift, and emphasised, in her splendid way, “Stephen, dementia care is a very specific need. We all need more and better training on it, and also, to be honest, we need more specialist dementia nurses.” I certainly agree that it is essential that there is training for all professionals dealing with dementia.
	The exponential growth of this debilitating condition is a result of the growing age profile. Today, we are dying in our 80s. That is a good thing of course, as many older people lead full and productive lives, but it also brings its own set of challenges, one of which is that one in six people over the age of 80 suffer from dementia.
	I am grateful that the coalition Government have stated their commitment to the national dementia strategy. I have had meetings on this issue with the Minister, so I am also grateful that he is present this evening. I also congratulate the Government on revising the implementation plan. Under this revised plan, dementia will be a major priority for the coalition, which I welcome, but I also look forward to hearing some of the specific detail.
	I remain very concerned about provision on the ground. In my constituency of Eastbourne, we are desperately short of specialised dementia day-respite provision, and even more so of overnight and longer term respite. The funding to my local county council has not kept up with demand. That has been the case over the last 10 to 15 years, so it is not a recent phenomenon, but as a result of funding restrictions East Sussex county council has had to close a couple of respite care centres over the past few years, and I know that there are similar situations across the country. To put it bluntly, we in Eastbourne need at least three to four times more specialist dementia respite care provision, and I suspect that, broadly, there is a similar shortage across England and Wales.
	This is not a new problem, and I am glad the coalition is recognising it by pledging an additional £2 billion. It is very significant that that extra money is being made available, especially in the current difficult times, so I am grateful for that, but I also want the detail, because I
	still have concerns about the pledges at the top not filtering down to the grass roots. Early diagnosis and intervention are essential to ensure taxpayers get the best value out of the substantial amounts the Government are spending on health and social care, and that will guarantee the best quality of life for dementia sufferers. This step will also reduce crisis admissions to hospital and release significant cost savings.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and I are members of the all-party group on dementia, and the Alzheimer’s Society has been tremendously helpful in providing support to our group. Recent evidence collated by the Alzheimer’s Society shows that only 40% of people with dementia have been given a formal diagnosis, and the figure varies considerably across the UK. Where people do receive a diagnosis, it often comes late on in their condition, limiting the choices that people with dementia and their carers can make.
	In addition to being given a diagnosis of dementia, people with the illness need to be able to access support and care early on in their condition, as my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) was saying. Services for people with dementia are skewed towards those in crisis situations, and people in the acute and long-term care sectors. As I have indicated, there is a lack of provision of support and care for the people with dementia who live in their own homes.
	Despite the projection that more than 1 million people will have dementia by 2025, dementia research is severely underfunded in comparison with research into other major diseases such as heart disease or cancer. For example, the Government spend eight times less on dementia research than they do on cancer research. Not in a million years would I want to reduce the amount of money spent on cancer research but, as we all know from our constituencies, dementia is a time bomb ready to explode. I know that the Government are investing more on research but I want to hear some of the detail. Clearly more money must be spent on research into this condition, as developing new treatments has the potential to reduce significantly the number of people with dementia. For example, delaying the onset of dementia by five years would halve the number of deaths from the condition, thus saving 30,000 lives a year. I therefore welcome the coalition’s commitment—this was also a pledge in the Liberal Democrat manifesto—to prioritise dementia research within the health research and development budget, and I look forward to reading the Department’s plan to improve the volume, quality and impact of dementia research.
	The Dilnot commission, which is due to report next month, provides an opportunity to resolve the historic and unsolved question of whether, as a society, we are able and willing to support people to live well in later life. The Dilnot commission must propose a road map for the delivery of a long-term settlement on the question of who pays for care and one that delivers significant improvements in access and quality. The funding envelope for social care must be increased to meet the needs of our ageing population, including the increasing number of people with dementia.
	So what would I like to see happen? First, I wish to see a long-term settlement for social care that offers good quality care for people with dementia at a fair price, along with a set of guarantees about what people
	can expect to receive. As a starting point, I challenge the Minister by saying that the state should provide a minimum level of care and support for free. Guarantees about the care to be provided should include access to early intervention services, regular short breaks for carers and a guarantee that the care will be of high quality. One of the things to come out of recent research is that the earlier dementia is identified, and the earlier interventions are made and people with dementia are supported in a respite care background, the more the worse rate of dementia appears to be delayed—already we know that it is delayed by a good two or three years. So this is one of those things that really would save money in the long term.
	If we are to revisit the Health and Social Care Bill, as I believe we may well do very soon, I would also like to see something else that is important. I know that the Minister feels passionately about this, so I am glad to be pushing at an open door. I am talking about better joined-up working between health and social care. However many years ago it took place and for whatever reason, it was a catastrophe that we split social care from the NHS. That has been appalling because social care budgets have been trimmed repeatedly over the years. In Eastbourne, as in every constituency, the social care sector deals with the respite care provision and the money has been cut every year, whereas the NHS, where money has not been cut—a lot of investment has gone into the NHS in the past 15 to 17 years—is dealing with people with dementia right at the crisis stage. It is an incredibly inefficient way of dealing with a desperate illness and it does not make financial sense. Better joined-up working between health and social care is essential for people with dementia.
	I believe that integration of care pathways across health and social care services should also be considered a duty, similar to effectiveness, safety and quality, and should be applicable to all health bodies from the Secretary of State downwards. I recognise the important role that health and well-being boards could play in encouraging greater integration between health and social care and I strongly endorse their inclusion in the Bill. Health and well-being boards can also provide a strategic oversight for the development of local health and social care services and the proposed boards in the Bill must have a strong focus on dementia.
	Finally, we come to multi-disciplinary commissioning. Let me use my partner as an example again: she is a community matron and her job is to go out into the community and to help people, mostly older people, to retain their independence by living at home. A lot of her work involves liaising with social services, the primary care trusts and the acute trust and doing all the multi-disciplinary co-ordination that is so necessary. We need to bring it into commissioning. I am concerned that most GPs might not necessarily know enough about dementia to commission effective services, so it would be beneficial in my view if a range of health and social care professionals could also be involved. I am not against GP consortia in principle, but I merely want more professionals from the different areas of health and social care to be involved in the commissioning process, such as nurses, occupational therapists and old age psychiatrists.
	I suspect that we have all been touched personally by the impact of dementia on someone we love. In my family, two of my aunts had dementia and one still lives with it every day. It is a desperate illness that affects hundreds of thousands of people and it has an impact on millions. My aunt is an example: she is a lady who rode a scooter from Nairobi to Johannesburg and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in the ’50s. She is an amazing, great woman who was a teacher for 50 years in east Africa. The dementia she has now is desperately sad—thankfully not so much for her, but for all the family around her. It is a desperate illness that affects many people and it is not going away any time soon. As a nation, we need to move up a gear. We need to get better at providing care for dementia sufferers and their families and we need to do it now.